The White House Just Colluded with Russia to Kill the Truth

 This is not what I planned to be doing this week…

I had intended to take a week or more off and unplug from social media, a much needed “digital detox” where I would turn off and tune out the noise the news, and the nonsense.

Well, so much for that.

Writer Uri Friedman at the Atlantic Magazine was the first to notice something odd about the official White House transcript from last week’s press conference with Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The official White House version both in printed transcript and in posted video, edited out what was the biggest moment of the entire event.

That moment was when Reuters reporter Jeff Mason asked Putin directly if he had wanted Donald Trump to win the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, and did he direct any one to help make that happen. Whereupon Putin answered just as directly that he had in fact wanted Trump to win and went on to give his reasons why.  

In the White House’s new “alternative reality version” of that exchange, things are remarkably different.

From The Atlantic:
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If you watch the White House live-stream of the press conference or look at the transcript published by the White House, the first half of Mason’s question is not there. Without it, the meaning of the exchange is substantially different.

Compare this transcript, of what actually happened, to the White House’s version. Here is the record of what took place, starting with the last part of Putin’s comments before Jeff Mason’s questions. Putin is describing his willingness to assist with Robert Mueller’s probe (bolding is mine):

Vladimir Putin: That could be a first step, and we can also extend it. Options abound, and they all can be found in an appropriate legal framework.

Jeff Mason: President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?

Putin: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.–Russia relationship back to normal.

And here’s the key section from the White House transcript, which makes it seem as though Putin is still talking about the Mueller probe: 

PRESIDENT PUTIN: That could be a first step, and we can also extend it. Options abound, and they all can be found in an appropriate legal framework.

Q: And did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?

PRESIDENT PUTIN: Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.–Russia relationship back to normal.

Another strange wrinkle comes from the Russian government’s English-language transcript of the press conference. In contrast to its footage of the press conference, which features what really happened, the transcript does not include any piece of that key exchange.

Transcripts published by the Federal News Service and Bloomberg Government mirror the White House transcript, while NPR’s contains the full exchange. Confusing matters further, C-SPAN’s footage contains Mason’s full question but only the second half of Putin’s answer.
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Now this could be chalked up to the White House just trying to get their spin on something out front and center, and many reporters , now somewhat numb to the Trump Administration’s complete disregard for facts and truth that they don’t like, let this pass. Then on this past Sunday in the middle of an epic meltdown on Twitter, Donald Trump tweeted this;

So Trump is actively trying to erase evidence that Vladimir Putin was supporting him in 2016, while at the same time tweeting out that Russia (in Trump Reality) is supporting Democrats.

 It's hard to follow the  dumpster fire that is the Trump Administration.  But  some journalists will see two seemingly unrelated burning bits  and connect the dots.  Rachel  Maddow breaks it down.

So just to be clear.  BOTH the White House and the Kremlin edited the transcript  of the Helsinki press conference to try to delete the moment where Vladimir Putin admits he was actively supporting Donald Trump to win the election in 2016. 

You just saw the White House actively collude with the Kremlin to wage a disinformation campaign against the American People.  Which raises a few key questions  for three specific groups of people.

1) The White House Press Corps. -  If  Journalists (and this includes  FOX News) do not raise bloody hell  and actively fight against  the White House hacking and  re-editing their reporting to fit Trump's "Alternative Facts"  then the free press in the United States is truly dead and  our democracy is in lethal peril.

 Sadly some journalists are scared to stand up and fight for a free press.    Over at the Washington Post, Phillip Bump assures us this was all just an innocent mistake and "No, the White House didn’t intentionally edit a question to Putin out of a video.   Sorry Phil, yes they did.    Anyone watching the live feeds from CNN, MSNBC, BBC  and listening on NPR  all clearly  saw and or heard Mason's FULL question. 

Yet  the White  House video  just happens to miss the first half of the question but not the 2nd?  Making it look like Mason was asking a follow up to  the previous question about the Mueller probe and NOT about who Putin wanted to win in 2016?

Oh yeah... and the omission was brought to the attention of the White House shortly after the transcript was posted and remains uncorrected.   So Really Phil? I know you folks at the Post are feeling under siege from this President, but your op-ed tries so hard to carry water for the White House that it's just embarrassing.

2) Congressional Republicans -  Are you patriotic Americans?   Or are you Kremlin sedated sheep who will accept a President who is Putin's stooge, and who is actively working for Russia's interests against  the United States?  Will you continue to  accept anything this White House tells you because it is less painful than admitting you sold your souls for tax cuts?  Are you really that willing to destroy our nation rather than admit a mistake?

I, like many Americans am not thrilled by idea of President Pence, or Vice President Ryan,  but it's  time for President Pence.   Or is your  fear of upsetting the "Trump Base" more important than the good of the Nation?   So "Country First"  really was just a catchy slogan, and wasn't something  you  actually meant?

3)Trump Voters - You are supporting a known Traitor.  That makes you a participant  in that Treason.  If you  really love America as much you claim to,  It's time  to stop supporting  Trump and his Party.  If you believe in such a thing as TRUTH,  if you believe the President of the United States should be a BETTER AMERICAN  than the President of  Russia, then it's time to STOP feeding this dumpster fire of a Presidency. 

If you can't  do that  then you are the mindless sheep that George Orwell  tried to warn us all not to become.

Happy Fourth of July

MARY LOUISE KELLY,

And I'm Mary Louise Kelly with a document from a deeply divided time. It was a time when Americans turned against each other.

STEVE INSKEEP,

A man in Philadelphia declared the rich, the poor, the high professor and the profane seem all infected with a grievous disorder, so the love of our neighbors seems banished. The love of self and opinions so far prevails.

KELLY: If the language seems old-fashioned it's because the time was 1776. The United States was early in its Revolutionary War. Even those who opposed British rule disagreed on what to do.

INSKEEP: And it was in this atmosphere that a few dozen men - the Continental Congress - drafted the document which John Adams called a declaration of independency. Its principles have guided the country ever since.

KELLY: Not all people were then held as equal, yet this document declared them so.

INSKEEP: American colonists were not entirely free to speak their minds. Indeed, their denunciation of British rule was considered treason punishable by death. Yet they signed the paper insisting on their freedom of speech, which Ben Franklin had once called a principal pillar of a free government.

KELLY: On this Independence Day, their words are read by our colleagues, NPR journalists.

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The Declaration Of Independence

Steve Inskeep


When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Rachel Martin


We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. --

David Greene


That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Julie McCarthy


Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;

Sam Sanders


and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Don Gonyea


But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. —

Deborah Amos


Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

Joe Palca


The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

Audie Cornish


He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

Shankar Vedantam


He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

Lulu Garcia-Navarro


He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

Sylvia Poggioli


He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

Frank Langfitt


He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

Cheryl Corley


He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

Nina Totenberg


He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.  He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.  He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

Michel Martin


He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

Elizabeth Blair


He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

Ofeibea Quist-Arcton


For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:  For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

Mary Louise Kelly


For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:  For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

Mara Liasson


For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences  For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

Linda Wertheimer


For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:  For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

Sonari Glinton


He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

Jackie Northam


He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

Gene Demby


He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

Ari Shapiro


He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.  In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.

Eyder Peralta


A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.  Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.

Susan Stamberg


We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.

Scott Horsley


They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

Cokie Roberts


We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States;

David Greene


that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved;

Rachel Martin


and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances,establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

Steve Inskeep


And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Mary Louise Kelly


Two-hundred forty (two) years ago today, church bells rang out over Philadelphia as the Continental Congress adopted this draft of the Declaration of Independence.
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Music - (SOUNDBITE OF ERIC WEINBERG'S "DAWN AT YORKTOWN")